PR-012 • Understanding Rhythmic Notation

This third installment of Really Useful Guitar Stuff is all about rhythm and was co-written with drum guru Justin Scott (Head of Drums at The Drum Institute).

This book is aimed at an intermediate level, but will be of huge benefit to anyone that needs to work on their rhythm skills!

Music consists of melody and rhythm and in my experience as a teacher, it is rhythm that is most often overlooked. Everybody worries about what notes to play when perhaps, they should be thinking about where to play them! Without a proper understanding of rhythm you will only ever be half way there! This book is about correcting that balance.

This ebook is written for you to learn about reading, as well as writing and understanding rhythm. By learning to read and understand rhythm you will develop an internal understanding of rhythm.

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Digital Download of pdf file (eBook)

Understanding Rhythm Notation is available to buy via the digital download from Payloadz, it is very fast, safe and easy. It costs £10 and you can buy in any currency, paypal will make the currency conversion for you (currency conversion). It is A4 sized but prints great on US letter sized paper too (just make sure you have "fit to page" selected when you go to print it!).

Clicking the link below will take you to paypal where you will pay for it, and then you will be emailed a link to download the ebook from Payloadz. Of course, after downloading, you can print it as many times as you like. It's a very reliable and safe method for buying eBooks and if you have any problems you can email me from the contact page or Customer Services!

How To Use

My introduction to reading rhythms was a book by Louis Belson's Modern Reading Text in 4:4, which was a good book. But there were many things that I thought were lacking too - there was no explanations or help at all - just pages of rhythms. There were (and still are) many mistakes in it and it also lacked the structure that we have got in this book. We stood on the shoulder of a giant! ;)

We start by reading and counting, understanding how note values (durations) are written and how to read tap and count along. Learning to these basic skills will help your understanding, and you will find that practicing reading rhythms will help your ‘internal understanding' - you will find that just by playing (or hearing or tapping) a rhythm you will know how to write it and how to ‘feel' it.

Feeling the rhythms is the goal here - to have played the rhythms enough times that have been consolidated internally so that you know them instinctively.

You should aim to recognise the rhythmic patterns in ‘blocks', much the same way as we recognise words. When a child learns to read they must spell out each letter of the word one at a time until they have done it enough times that they recognise the word instantly.

It is the same process here - you should be repeating the exercises over and over, without trying to memorise the exercises, but to recognise the ‘blocks'.

I would recommend that all instruments start learning to read by tapping along, without regard to note duration. Drummers generally do not control the duration of the notes (‘hit points'), but other instruments such as bass guitar have a great emphasis on the ‘rhythm of the silence'. Once you have played through a given chapter you might like to go through the exercises and play them on your instrument if you are able. I have found playing scales is a good way to play the rhythms and can be a creative and fun way to do the exercises - but I would only recommend doing that after you are comfortable tapping or clapping them.

You will almost certainly find that doing the exercises in this book will improve your general sense of time and your rhythm playing - and hopefully you will put these exercises into practice with transcriptions too. If you are a guitarist transcribing music (which you should be) and writing it in guitar tab, you will find it very useful to add rhythms, it will help you understand what is being played, help you see the bar lines and the underlying harmony of the song, and therefore help you analyze the song deeper too. You will find the transcription of rhythm as challenging as the notes, and equally as beneficial I'm sure.

I hope you enjoy it!

Reviews

We've not had it out long enough to have any reviews here yet - but the forum mods that I sent an advance copy too all liked it! Will get some up here as soon some people review it for me!

Read reviews from people just like you on the forum... good and bad allowed... here.